


Stiofáin

by Siria



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-03
Updated: 2011-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Danny was born into a third-floor Corpo flat whose rooms were already crowded with his Ma and Da, his Nan and his three sisters." A very silly AU, set in late 80s/early 90s Ireland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stiofáin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



> Written for leupagus' [Take Your Fandom Home With You Day](http://leupagus.livejournal.com/60259.html) comment fest. Thanks to dogeared for letting me write it at her over IM!

Danny was born into a third-floor Corpo flat whose rooms were already crowded with his Ma and Da, his Nan and his three sisters. Long hours working as a cleaner left Assumpta William with neither the time nor the inclination to tame her home's chaos, and so by the time baby Matty arrived, pink-cheeked and wailing, Danny had already learned to let Dublin raise him. The city's streets were no quieter than his house, but they gave him space to run—through the Liberties on legs permanently scraped and scratched; dodging around the stalls of the traders on Moore Street; providing a quick escape from the kids the next tower block over when they engaged in desperate mock battles. Danny learned the lie of the land through feet that pounded over concrete and cobblestones, each crack and curve readable through the thin soles of the runners his Ma bought cheap in Penneys.

Dublin in the eighties was a grey city under a grey sky, crumbling and neglected as yet another generation finished school and fled the country. Grass and trees were primary coloured curiosities in Danny's schoolbooks; the closest he got to the smells of nature was the Smithfield Horse Market, where the air was thick with the reek of dung and hot horse flesh. The first signs of growth were a long time coming, and the first time Danny left the city, the first time he saw the low green roll of the countryside as anything other than the backdrop to _Glenroe_ 's gentle, dull drama, he was eighteen and on his way to Templemore—the first in his family to get the Leaving, the first to even entertain the thoughts of joining the Guards, let alone get in.

(The Ma was beside herself when he told her, and took her place in Mass that Sunday with an air of purest accomplishment. "Won't that show Maggie Murphy, with her airs over her boy Joseph and him only a stockroom clerk in the ESB? Ah sure son, I'm very proud of you all the same," she said, going up on tip toes to press a kiss to Danny's reddening cheek.

"Ah Ma," he said, "Go 'way outta that," but he let go of the accumulated dignity of his eighteen years long enough to hug her fiercely before he got on the train out of Heuston.)

Templemore train station, Danny realised soon after arrived there, was in the middle of fecking nowhere. There were fields with honest to Jaysus cows in them. Three of the cows—big black and white ones—stood looking over a hedgerow, blinking long-lashed eyes at him, and Danny decided that rather than trying to assess the level of threat they posed him, he'd best just continue struggling up the road to the town proper. He lugged with him his suitcase (newly purchased from Arnott's, a special investment) and the bag his Ma had packed special for him (sandwiches and two thermoses of tea, an emergency pair of Y-fronts, three copies of novenas (one to Our Lady of Lourdes, one to St Therese of Lisieux, one to Padre Pio, because it was best to have all fronts covered) and a scapula he was under strict orders to wear in case the Guards decided to throw decades of tradition to the wind and start carrying guns.

"Need a hand with that?" Danny heard someone say. He turned his head to see a guy slouching down the road behind him, tall and carrying a duffle bag and wearing what was possibly the most disreputable army surplus jacket Danny'd ever seen.

"Do I look like I need help?" Danny spat, partly for the sake of form and partly because he was feeling lost and out of sorts—three hours on the slow train down from Dublin and he might as well be in another world.

"Well," said the guy, eyes crinkling up at the corners as he thought. His accent was Kerry-thick, almost a parody of itself—the kind of accent Danny and his friends would put on when they were acting the eejit in school, pretending to be culchies. "You do indeed. Want me to carry one for you?"

Danny made a show of rolling his eyes. "If you're only going to be bothering me otherwise, sure go on." He purposefully thrust the heaviest bag at the guy, and was disgusted to find this didn't cause him to rock back on his heels even a little—clearly they bred them giant-sized down in Kerry. Probably a side effect of a diet heavy on the TK Red Lemonade, the ham sandwiches and the Mikado biscuits.

They walked for a moment in silence until Danny, conscience pricked by the memory of his Ma's last hug, offered in a somewhat begrudging manner, "Danny Williams."

"Stiofáin Mac Gearóid," the guy answered.

Danny squinted over at him. "What, are you from the Gaeltacht or something?"

"Begod," said Stiofáin, face the carefully bland mask of the cute hoor chancing his arm, "sure they're breeding them clever in Dublin now, aren't they?"

"Smartarse," Danny mumbled.

"I know why they let you into Templemore," Stiofáin said, a smirk flickering around the corners of his mouth. "That kind of detecting ability, sure you're a natural altogether."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Danny said, rolling his eyes at heaven just as the skies opened overhead and unleashed a torrent of heavy, hard raindrops. "Can this day get any worse?"

And it didn't, not much—at least, not until they got checked in at the barracks and realised that Williams, D., had been assigned Mac Gearóid, S., as a bunkmate.

"Sure won't this be a grand set up altogether," Stiofáin said with blithe unconcern. "Dibs on the top bunk," and the whole bed rattled with the force of his outsized frame landing on top of it. Unnaturally large feet, clad in sandy-coloured work boots, dangled over the edge.

Danny opened his bag to unpack, stared down at the stacks of carefully dogeared novenas provided by his mother, and sighed. Maybe he should consider starting one. It was going to be a long six months.


End file.
